Browse or jump to the faculty member’s last name:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach
Martha C. Nussbaum
Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to questions of justice and political philosophy is exciting and inspiring. I am currently writing a book (The Morality of Gay Rights, Routledge, forthcoming 2002) that builds on Nussbaum’s ideas as a way of formulating and defending gay rights positions.
Carlos A. Ball
College of Law
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Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Slip
U. F. Kocks, A. S. Argon, M. F. Ashby
Armand J. Beaudoin
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
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Traffic Engineering Handbook
James Plim (editor)
It contains good information on various aspects of traffic engineering. It is an up-to-date reference book that students can use in research and class work.
Rahim F. Benekohal
Civil and Environmental Engineering
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High Technology and Low-Income Communities
Donald A. Schon, Bish Sanyal, William J. Mitchell
Donald Schon’s theory of “reflective practice” helped me think more deeply about the nature of professional knowledge in LIS. High Technology in Low Income Communities extends his seminal ideas to focus squarely on the intersection of information technology and social justice. This book inspired me to question my role as a researcher in today’s society.
Ann Bishop
Library and Information Science
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Message Effects Research
Sally Jackson
Jackson’s Message Effects Research was a revolutionary turn in communication research. It called into question many assumptions about processes of communication and the methods we use to study them. Sally Jackson has been the greatest influence on my career and her work has had a profound impact on our discipline.
Dale E. Brashers
Speech Communication
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Touching Eternity
Thomas Barone
It’s a powerful, well conceptualized, exquisitely written study that gives us an insight on what education can be, inviting us to reflect on one‘s goals and aspirations.
Liora Bresler
Curriculum and Instruction
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Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class
Herbert G. Gutman
Power and Culture was the first book that revealed to me the value of using class analysis to explain the American experience. The book provided a name, a concept and a framework for understanding how working-class identity is lived out. Herbert Gutman pioneered the study of everyday existence as a way to explain what it meant to be working class. His approach became a way for me to better understand my own heritage.
Robert Bruno
Labor and Industrial Relations
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The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain
Bhikhu Parekh, et al.
This book affirms, among other things, the relationship between critically-engaged history and social justice, between anti-racist teaching and the possibilities of a genuinely pluralist democracy. For Americans who continue to view the United Kingdom as essentially white, this is a salutary reminder of the continued legacies of empire in and for Greater Britain.
Antoinette Burton
History
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The Musician’s Soul
James Jordan
As a musician and artist, I constantly strive to create expression and emotion through music. The Musician’s Soul provides me inspiration and direction for discovering my innermost feelings by deepening my spirituality. This enables me to grow as a person and musician, and to convey that growth through musical performance.
Thomas Caneva
School of Music
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Theory of Value
Gerard Debreu
Gerard Debreu’s Theory of Value stands as perhaps the foremost example of the elegance and clarity with which economics can describe human interaction. I first encountered this book in my third year at the University of Chicago. Even though I had never met the man, in a real sense, it was Debreu who persuaded me that I should pursue a research career in theoretical economics. Today, Theory of Value still reminds me that it is important that we approach theoretical research, at least in part, as craft. A beautiful and well conceived model will almost always lead to significantly greater understanding. I would certainly not compare my own poor craft to Debreu’s, but I am grateful that master craftsmen exist in our profession to set a standard that we all might aspire to achieve.
John Conley
Economics
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Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications
Stanley Wasserman and Katherine Faust
As we enter the 21st century, “networks” have emerged as a compelling framework to understand and design a variety of social, economic, political, organizational, biological, and technological systems. This book offers the first foundational treatise on the growing and impressive scholarship for describing and analyzing networks.
Noshir Contractor
Speech Communication
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Treasury of Jamaican Poetry
John E. McFarlane
This book echoes both the voices of my education and the voices of my cultural traditions. These two voices have instilled in me the urge to know, the ability to understand, and a deep appreciation of a shared humanity.
Richard Cooke
Agricultural Engineering
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The Secret Life of Dust
Hannah Holmes
Sounded interesting and I wanted to read it. I work with soil and that is were much dust comes from and where much of it ends up.
Robert Darmody
Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences
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The Nutrition Society, 1941-1991, Presidents and Honorary Members:
Their Stories and Recollections
Elsie M. Widdowson
I think that our undergraduate and graduate students need to have a resource that includes the history of our society and influential leaders in the field of nutrition.
Sharon M. Donovan
Food Science and Human Nutrition
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W. V. Quine’s work, distilled in his classic book, Word and Object, is systematic, clear, and compelling. By trying to resist and challenge his views, I’ve learned a great deal about how to think seriously and carefully about central questions in philosophy of language and logic.
Gary M. Ebbs
Philosophy
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The Best of James Herriot
James Herriot
These stories are about home and the characters that I once lived amongst. They have been a great source of enjoyment and inspiration. Hopefully, they will provide the same for UIUC students.
Mike Ellis
Animal Sciences
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Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell
J. Enoch Powell (Editor: Rex Collings)
This book collects many of the most important pronouncements of one of the more interesting (and controversial) figures of Modern British politics. I thought it preferable to select a work by a political figure rather than a work by a political scientist.
Brian Gaines
Political Science
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The First Quarto of King Henry V
William Shakespeare (Andrew Gurr, Editor)
Although the 1600 Quarto of Shakespeare’s Henry V has long been considered corrupt, this edition makes the case that it represents what Shakespeare’s acting company actually performed. Veritably all printed texts of this famous history play are based on the folio text of 1623, but the editor Andrew Gurr shows that those of us interested in drama as a performed art also need to study (and perform) the first quarto.
Robert B. Graves
Theatre
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Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage
David Card and Alan B. Krueger
Kevin F. Hallock
Department of Economics
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Plainsong: A Fable for the Millenium
Deborah Grabien
It’s one of my favorite books ever. It has elements of myth, fantasy, and politics, religion, and magic. It touches on guilt, innocence, gender, and mental illness. Humans and animals are equally intelligent and ultimately tantalizingly complex. This book challenges our assumptions and teaches us, like a biblical parable. I want more people to read it! I think it has not been appreciated for its brilliance.
Wendy Heller
Psychology
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The Constitutive Law of Solids
Kezhi Huang and Yonggang Huang
My father is a professor of engineering mechanics in China. I have followed his footsteps to become a professor of mechanical engineering, since he has always been my role model. I feel very fortunate to have co-authored with my father this book, The Constitutive Law of Solids, which I donate to the UIUC Engineering Library.
Yonggang Young Huang
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
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I selected this book because it integrates action, mystery, and romance into a story with a powerful, unique philosophical message—a message that influenced me a great deal. This novel describes the death and re-birth of the human spirit. It made me feel and think.
Anthony Jacobi
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
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AASL: Origins and Development of a National Professional Association for School Librarians, 1896-1951. PhD dissertation University of Chicago, 1982
I selected this text because of its role as a scholarly resource and personal inspiration in the writing of my own dissertation (The Strength of the Inconspicuous: Youth Services Librarians, the American Library Association, and Intellectual Freedom for the Young, 1939-1955). Pond’s meticulous scholarship and skillful interweaving of the many stories that comprise the history of school librarianship led me to primary source documents and publications that I would not have otherwise known existed, and gave me a sense of both the complex and intriguing history of youth services librarianship and of my own role as a historian of the profession. Writing a dissertation is a lonely process, but Pond’s work was pivotal in making me continually aware of the invisible audience of future scholars and colleagues for whom I was writing. Thank you, Patricia Pond.
Christine Jenkins
Library and Information Science
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The Monge-Ampére Equation
Cristian E. Gutiérrez
I see this selection as a change to acknowledge the tremendous importance for me of the math library here, which has one of the best collections in the country. This is a good book on an important topic and, as such, a suitable representative of the math library as a whole.
Robert Jerrard
Department of Mathematics
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Antenna Handbook
Y. T. Lo and S. W. Lee
This is the most authoritative book on the topic of antennas. It was edited by two most distinguished professors from our department.
Jianming Jin
Electrical and Computer Engineering
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The Country and the City
Raymond Williams
The Country and the City is a powerful, moving and humane analysis of literary texts that bear witness against, or offer ideological mystifications of, the transformation of the English countryside and nation that followed upon systematic enclosure, the capitalization of agriculture and the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
Suvir Kaul
English
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The Insomnia Drawings
Louise Bourgeois
The Ricker Library’s collection of books on contemporary artists has been a significant resource to me as artist and teacher. I am delighted to have the opportunity to add to that collection The Insomnia Drawings by Louise Bourgeois. Bourgeois is an artists in her 80’s who continues to astonish me with her ability to produce powerful and affecting work. I think Bourgeois has produced some of her strongest work during these past twenty years.
Barbara F. Kendrick
School of Art and Design
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The Economics of the Environment
Wallace E. Oates
The papers in this edited volume sparked my interest in Environmental Economics in graduate school and motivated me to develop a career in this area.
Madhu Khanna
Agricultural and Consumer Economics
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The New Care and Training of the Trotter and Pacer
Multiple Authors
My grandfather’s standard-bred horse operation stimulated my interest in combining my love of horses and biological sciences into my career.
Kevin H. Kline
Animal Sciences
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The World Wheat Book
Alain P. Bonjean and William J. Angus, Editors
I chose this book because the subject is wheat breeding which is my area of research. Also, it was just recently published, and I wrote part of one chapter.
Frederic L. Kolb
Crop Sciences
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Plane Trigonometry
S. L. Loney
The book that taught me to visualize mathematics.
Praveen Kumar
Civil and Environmental Engineering
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Spatial Patterns: Higher Order Models in Physics and Mechanics
L. A. Peletier and W. C. Troy
It has influenced research on sharp inequalities for 50 years, and some of the problems it raises are still being worked on today.
Richard Laugesen
Mathematics
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Emotional Development: The Organization of Emotional Life in the Early Years
L. Alan Sroufe
I selected this book because the author (Alan Sroufe) was one of my mentors in graduate school. He had a profound influence on my thinking and research about social-emotional development and family systems. He taught me that the study of typical and atypical development are inextricably linked. He also emphasized that psychologists can (and should) systematically research clinical constructs, e.g., attachment relationships, generational boundaries in family systems, etc. His work has great relevance for the lives of developing children and their families.
Sarah Mangelsdorf
Psychology
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Microbe Hunters
Paul DeKruif
As a child, the stories in this book fascinated me. They introduced me to the scientists whom I still regard as heroes, and instilled in me the desire to investigate infectious diseases.
Milton McAllister
Veterinary Pathobiology
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Tibaldo and the Hole in the Calendar
Abner Shimony
Timothy G. McCarthy
Philosophy
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To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense
William P. Alford
This title, of course, was a great temptation, in a rather irreverent way, when the task at hand was selecting a book for a library display. But instead of promoting the theft of good literature, this insightful work of non-fiction explains one aspect of a paradox that has become de rigueur to ignore in much contemporary scholarship: different societies and cultures often view and value the same event in dramatically different ways. In this case, the different societies are traditional China and the Western world; the same event is the take and copying of the intellectual property of an author, the difference in views and values is that the taking is perceived as a compliment to the author in one society, as a theft from the author in the other. My summary simplifies important nuances and issues that Professor Alford’s superb book does not. I value this book because it serves as an important reminder that the rules and ideas expressed by law often are as value-laden and parochial as they are universal.
Philip J. McConnaughay
College of Law
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Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
Jonathan Glover
In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, this book may enable people to see that for the U. S. to respond with indiscriminate attacks of its own that kill innocent people would be regressive, barbarous, and self-defeating, and would lower us to the level of our attackers.
Jefferson McMahan
Philosophy
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Molecular Evolution: A Phylogenetic Approach
Roderic D. M. Page and Edward C. Holmes
I am a veterinarian with an interest in infectious diseases. By chance and need, I stumbled into the study of molecular evolution. This reference provided me with a straightforward introduction into molecular phylogenetic analysis. It allowed me to begin to understand and appreciate the evolutionary relevance of molecular data.
Joanne B. Messick
Veterinary Pathobiology
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Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenting
Elizabeth Bartholet
Professor Bartholet’s book powerfully illuminates the ways in which law not only reflects, but also constructs, social preferences concerning the family. Although focusing on adoption, her book suggests broader insights about how hierarchical notions of family form are imbedded (sometimes even unconsciously) in law.
David D. Meyer
College of Law
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Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
Sean P. Meyn
Electrical and Computer Engineering
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The Intellectual Life
A. G. Sertillanges (translated by M. Ryan)
Scholarship requires scholars. Many books talk about scholarship, but Sertillanges’ book teaches how to be a scholar. It can help anyone achieve the life and lifestyle of the productive scholar. Graduate students especially should take note—it is much more helpful than any “how to do a dissertation” book.
Steven C. Michael
Business Administration
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Marie Curie: A Life
Susa N. Quinn
I have read three books about Madam Curie. One in Slovak language, one in German language, and one in English. The biography and the novels about Marie Curie always fascinated me and motivated me to become a scientist. Her life story also encouraged me to find the balance between being a mother, wife, and a scientist.
Klara Nahrstedt
Computer Science
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Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives
Carolyn Kay Steedman
A colleague from Women’s Studies sent me to Steedman after hearing of my work on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English readers of cheap printed romances. Steedman’s history/memoir grounds her materialist feminist approach to nineteenth-century culture in her working-class London childhood, especially her mother’s longing for forbidden material goods and her own longing to live out fairy tales. I realized I felt similarly driven to research popular readers who, despite narrowed cultural options, found stories that spoke to their lives.
Lori H. Newcomb
English
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The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt
John Barrell
The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt helped me to conceptualize my own book, After the Revolution: Antoine-Jean Gros, Napoleon, and Official Painting. Barrell’s book is about England, while mine is about France, but his exploration of the ways in which artists and critics thought about art in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries provided me with important insights into changing notions of art, propaganda, and the public.
David J. O’Brien
School of Art and Design
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Introduction to Fourier Optics
Joseph W. Goodman
Goodman’s Fourier Optics links two fields, linear system theory and optics, in an elegant and direct fashion. Studying this text as a graduate student was instrumental in my choice of careers.
George Papen
Electrical and Computer Engineering
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King Leopold’s Ghost
Adam Hochschild
I read this book expecting a dry lesson on colonialism. What I discovered as a tragic story that exposes human nature at its worst and best. Although chosen by an economist, this book deserves to be read by economists and non-economists alike.
Stephen L. Parente
Economics
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Holy Bible
This book changed my life.
Glaucio H. Paulino
Civil and Environmental Engineering
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Legacies: Family History in Sound
Ellen Rothman and Elizabeth Pleck
Legacies: Family History in Sound, 18 audio cassettes and the accompanying textbook, Elizabeth Pleck and Ellen Rothman, with the assistance of Paula. I worked for two years with another historian and two radio producers in creating these cassettes and the accompanying textbook, with funding from Annenberg/the CPB. I use the tapes in teaching, and I wanted the Library to own a copy. These cassettes represent one of many efforts to interest a large public audience in the new research about women’s and family history.
Elizabeth Pleck
History
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Commitment, Conflict, and Caring
Philip Brickman
This book changed how I see the world. It shows how people come to commit to people, jobs, professions, etc., and how ambivalence and commitment are two sides of the same coin. It’s brilliant and, in my opinion, largely unrecognized due to the early death of its lead author.
Michael G. Pratt
Business Administration
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Nondestructive Evaluation—A Tool in Design, Manufacturing and Service
Don E. Bray and Roderic K. Stanley
Main text for a course I developed.
Henrique Reis
General Engineering
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The Nature and Theory of the General Circulation of the Atmosphere
Edward N. Lorenz
It conveys brilliant insights (from the discoverer of chaos) into how the global atmosphere works in beautiful prose. None of the science has gone out-of-date in 34 years, and it remains the best written book in my field. It bowled me over when I read it as a student.
Walter A. Robinson
Atmospheric Sciences
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The Poetical Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins (Editor: Norman H. Mackenzie)
While writing the book that contributed to my promotion (A Queer Chivalry: The Homoerotic Asceticism of Gerard Manley Hopkins), I found this edition of Hopkins’ poems an invaluable resource. It’s beyond the budget of the average reader, and I’d be honored to be the alibi for its availability in our Library’s collection.
Julia F. Saville
English
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Encyclopedia Britannica
Mariangela Segre
Pathobiology
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Corporate Strategy
Igor Ansoff
I first read this book as an MBA student and returned to it again during my subsequent management consulting career. The business perspective it offered triggered my interest in strategic management as a field of specialization, and the more I read, the more my curiosity was stimulated. I often think that I embarked upon my doctoral studies to attempt to answer the important questions it raised. I have built my research expertise by investigating these questions and the related questions that arose (and continue to arise) during these investigations. Thus, the book could be said to represent the foundation of my academic career.
Anju Seth
Business Administration
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Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine
Eugene Braunwald (Editor)
Donald D. Sisson
Veterinary Clinical Medicine
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Selected Works of A. N. Kolmogorov
V.M. Tikhomirov, Editor
Richard B. Sowers
Mathematics
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Essays on Music and Culture
The Treasury of Petrus Alamire
I have found that sacred music from the early Renaissance provides some of the most useful examples of choral repertoire that is artistically compelling to the performer and listener. Over the past five years, I have collaborated with Professor Emeritus Herbert Kellman and Ensemble Choragos to perform works from the Alamire complex of music manuscripts at professional conferences and concerts in Europe, Canada, and the United States. That work has allowed me to discover new compositions and to participate in particularly gratifying choral performances. The personal satisfaction of those experiences has been deepened by the awareness that those students who participated with me have been granted performance opportunities that will provide a benchmark of excellence for their entire musical careers. These two books document the importance of Professor Kellman’s scholarship, and my choice of them registers my thanks for his collaboration with the work of Ensemble Choragos.
Fred Stoltzfus
School of Music
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To me, this book is about maintaining integrity in one’s work, about living up to your own standards of excellence in the face of pressure to conform to something less. It addresses some thorny issues. What compromises does one owe to one’s community? Where does integrity end and self-centered-ness begin?
Deborah L. Thurston
General Engineering
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Introduction to Continuum Mechanics
M. E. Gurtin
It contains fundamental material that I have constantly drawn upon for my research and teaching at UIUC.
Daniel A. Tortorelli
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
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The Social Life of Information
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid
John Seely Brown edited a classic text on intelligent tutoring systems that influenced my undergraduate final year project and then my doctoral research. As my research interests have moved toward the interaction between people, computer systems, information, and the social context that all this happens in, I find that yet again he is there asking important questions. This very accessible book examines the crucial problems of how can we design computer systems so that they can cope with the messiness and complexity of real life, and what we can learn from how people cope with these problems by social interaction. The book illustrates that it is possible to ask important questions, to gain new insights into how the world works and how to design better systems, and yet still explain these findings in an accessible way to a wide audience.
Michael B. Twidale
Library and Information Science
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Transgenic Animals in Agriculture
J. D. Murrary, G. B. Anderson, A. M. Oberbauer, M. M. McGloughlin (Editors)
This book is a compilation of recent research involving the use of transgenic technology to improve animal agriculture. This is an area in which I have been involved for many years and which has been important in the development of my academic career here at the University of Illinois.
Matthew B. Wheeler
Department of Animal Sciences
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Economic Theory of Teams
Jakob Marschak and Roy Radner
It embodies the depth of understanding and clarity of exposition that I hope to achieve in my work.
Steven R. Williams
Economics